My UX learningAlways curious and ready to evolve

Just to remember what brings me here: “Usability means making sure something works well, and that a person of average ability or experience can use it for its intended purpose without getting hopelessly frustrated.” Steve Krug

It is really interesting to train the ability of becoming average, have eyes to see from other perspective. I find myself thinking something is obvious until I move away to see it with other eyes. I want to learn techniques that allow me to be more certain on how other people interact with my work. I believe that this will help to deliver the message in a more effective way, increasing comprehension and growth.

Pass is: yea!

“As far as humanly possible, when I look at a web page it should be self-evident. Obvious. Self-explanatory.” Steve Krug

Love this quote!

Class 1: Identify the problem

There is a Sailing Club that has training and competition during the weekends and holidays. Activity is never the same and time range may change, as well as instructions to sailors. ie: many times they need to read regatta sailing instructions or tuning guide documentation in advance.

We are speaking of 150 sailors divided in seven groups, according to the kind of boat they sail. Younger sailors come along with parents, older sailors are aged 23/30. There are also 11 coaches that send information to each group, and a head coach that coordinates all (and needs to know all that's going on).

Communication between members of the team is highly difficult. Coaches send messages to sailors through different channels: Whapp, e-mail, verbally. This messages affect the activity if they are not delivered / received in time and need to be crystal clear. When someone does not have the info they usually blame the sender on this. So, why not make people fetch the information instead of sending it along?

Based on this idea we aim to create something that is highly accessible, with information clearly categorized to reach the respective user. Each sailor must be able to see by himself in advance what will happen in the weekend, and what they need to bring with them or do before Saturday.

We will be providing a tool to coaches to publish and sailors to inform themselves.

Sharing some thoughts...

While creating the cards to do this sorting exercise with potential users, I wonder if I should ask a few questions 1) what kind of info would you expect to find in this place? 2) What kind of info will you want to put in this place? 3) Do you find useful to have links to other places? which ones? Therefore, I also plan to include whatever they bring in to the card sorting exercise, so I created a special card.

Things to find out on the way

1) Shall we focus only in one problem? Solve one thing consistently and delete secondary needs. 2) Is it possible to combine 1 main solution with the rest? 3) Can we do it in 2 / 3 stages? 4) Should we consider user profiles to show each one different stuff?

Sometimes we want to deliver more than they expect, and this may only bring noise in...

Sorting cards

This first image belongs to a parent. He said he expects to find dates and its activities in a monthly frame, and he would like to see annual program.Stuff he would like to find here: World Sailing Rules Book, weather forecasts (links), a live webcam that shows sailors activity ashore. Reasons to come to this site: weekly notices and photo/video of recent events. We asked what was the first two items that are necessary for this site to be worth and said: monthly /weekly notices and photos

Mariela 's tree (team leader Persona) Said she expects to find annual program and weekly notices, how to 's and and guides in this order of importance. She finds links to weather forecasts and sites that sell boat equipment will be very useful. "Live webcam idea sounds great". She dropped some ideas as icons to identify sailing categories.

Bruno' s tree. As a head coach, Bruno seems focused in solving the problem. He is concerned that other items that are not annual programs or weekly notices will disturb the communication. if there was a photo, he will choose just one weekly, and publish it with a quote (opportunity to send other [meta?] messages). Many photos/videos placed there all together are more confusing than attractive. Guides and regulations are important (need to be accessible to all). Webcam may distract people but may also bring them to see and this may serve the main cause we must never forget: communication. Button is for a name he does not figure out what should be (My guess is blog). And subjects under Guides and procedures are a part inside the the guides, which should be focused to each sailing category individually.

Touching points

I am thinking that Stage 1 stands up clearly enough to create a navigation tree. I decided to focus in coincidences and maybe test some features when the site is live. Webcam looks interesting and a single image with one quote is even more interesting. In certain way the need of getting the info will make people come, and then there is an opportunity to place relevant information and install some ideas with hero images. It will be better to keep it simple at the beginning.

Deleting Unnecessary stuff

​When I started sorting cards I thought the site was going to be huge. In the process users show me the way and I saw that we needed to delete some info because the main reason of this site was going to be affected. The wireframe UI exercise helped me to delete even more unnecessary stuff, and group better the information. By setting my mind to focus on persona's goals I reinforced this idea and also realize that each persona will go for his own piece of cake, ignoring the rest. This is how it really happens. While testing I changed some names and icons, and considered including tools like google calendar. I also confirmed that other ideas were correct. I am considering to have a blog to put there all the stuff i deleted, but I wonder if it is necessary. I started to think in mobile layout, and I think I will delete the home video or image to increase performance. Also, I think that some stuff need to be studied with analytics to see if people are engaged with that kind of stuff (especially videos)

Adjustments are always possible

​I really enjoyed this class because the flow is very natural. Creating a mood board and then the style screen really helped me when working at the screen layout. I think that XD together with this method is a powerful combination. As a result I was able to create a consistent design in a couple of hours. After sketching the first layout I went back to my personas and refreshed their goals, so I did some changes to navigation. I realized some names were still confusing and that some shortcuts were necessary. At this moment I want to run and test this version with some users and see their reactions. (I can hold my horses, yes I can.)

I must confess that Photoshop does not seems to me as the best choice for screen-lay out. I used XD and loved the transition from wireframe to screen layout. It is a wonderful tool, made me save tons of time.

pass is: Yea!

​Recording interaction was very easy with Adobe XD. I find it is really awsome. The first thing I realized was that I never thought how sidebars were going to be displayed in mobile view. I sketched this manually (as learned in early classes) and headed to XD to create this views. It took me less than one hour. I Know it is because this tool is the correct one. Then I prototyped, and changed some button sizing, when you test interaction in this way things become so evident... I love to find them out early. I decided to perform tests with potential users and, even though I know more things will show up, I also know a big percentage is under control, there is little space for surprises. This process is a perfect guide to build consciousness on how users interact with our work. I am glad and thankful to participate in this course.

I joined the course with great curiosity because those four letters (UX UI) were hard to define for me. Many people bring up UX to argument decisions, but when you talk a bit more you realize its just cliche. Most people do not really know what this is about. I chose to step away from that crowd of ux name droppers and enrolled this course. I must say that it was challenging, and I did things I am not comfortable with, like videoing myself, and discovered a couple of methods that will definitely use since now on: this are moodboards and personas. Personas is a great tool to build empathy, a starting point to define / discuss priorities with the client. Clients know their needs, but underestimate users needs. The lack of balance in both may bring a whole project to fail. Moodboard is a very easy way to put ideas together and keep them present. I like XD a great lot, and received lots of valuable information on the side. I enjoyed sharing other people's process and their feed back..